


They have not chosen me, he said

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: A Christmas Carol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Party, F/M, Humor, Romance, argument
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8877580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: They'd settled on using her homemade cheese straws since they only had a few curly straws left in the house from when Jed's nephews visited. Frankly, she thought the children would have resolved the argument more easily.





	

“Don’t sulk. You lost fair and square in rock, paper, scissors, a coin toss and drawing straws,” Mary said reasonably. She was being reasonable and he was emphatically not, pouting like a four year old, instead of the nearly forty-four year old he was. “Lord grant me patience,” she muttered sotto voce but perhaps not sotto voce enough.

“Fat lot of good that’ll do you, you’re an atheist,” Jed retorted. She just looked at him then, a long look through narrowed eyes, that took in his red cashmere holiday sweater and the charcoal cords embroidered with gamboling polar bears, his furrowed brow and the way his beautiful mouth was pretty much the Wikipedia entry illustration for a pout.

“Jedediah Foster. People are arriving in fifteen minutes and I had planned to spend those fifteen minutes cleaning off the kitchen counter and sipping a very cold glass of white wine. This needs to be over, just please, for the love of all that is holy, whether I believe in holiness or not, go cue up ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ in the living room,” she said.

“Fine. But if I’d known, I would’ve just said the black and white Alistair Sims,” he said, rendering the argument of the past hour entirely moot. She could either scream or laugh. It was the polar bears that did it; she laughed, so hard tears came to her eyes, and he couldn’t help but smile as well. She walked over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“There’s nothing that says we can’t do a private screening of ‘Scrooged’ after everyone goes home. It’s tradition to wear new pajamas on Christmas Eve and I have a set I think you’ll like,” she said.

“You know I don’t like pajamas that much, Mary. They’re scratchy and hot,” he said, but he couldn’t pull off the whiny tone as well with her smiling up at him provocatively.

“They’re not for you to wear,” she replied, fluttering her eyelashes a little, then chuckling again at the way his expression lightened and his heart, under her hand, beat faster. They were down to eleven minutes, but she could still pour the wine while he searched for the remote before the doorbell rang.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I thought it would be easy to write a period story for A Christmas Carol, but I kept getting dragged to Anne or to grapple with the fact that it became popular in 1863 and then I'd have to check the chronology of the show more (I know, fan fiction problems right?)... and since I am trying to finish a few other stories as well as work on a Mercy Street Secret Santa story, I punted and went modern. (I also referenced Tiny Tim in another story, for the astute reader...)
> 
> So, this story juxtaposes The Muppet Christmas Carol and Scrooged (with Bill Murray) as the crux of Jed and Mary's argument since Jed evidently vetoed the Alistair Sims version. Both are worth a watch. The title of this story is another gift from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
